The earl of the Ho said, ‘Very well. But what am I to do? and what am I not to do? How am I to be guided after all in regard to what I accept or reject, and what I pursue or put away from me?’ Zo of the Northern Sea replied, ‘From the…
‘A frog in a well cannot be talked with about the sea; – he is confined to the limits of his hole. An insect of the summer cannot be talked with about ice; – it knows nothing beyond its own season. A scholar of limited views cannot be talked with about…
Myth, a fabulous story of a single individual of destiny, that inscrutable intersection of circumstance has placed on the pivot point of choice! Is it to be “life”, or will it be “death”, capitulation to maintain things as they are, to remain asleep? What will you do with your life? The great wager, a…
Children of Darkness By Robert Graves “In their generation wiser than the children of Light.” We spurred our parents to the kiss, Though doubtfully they shrank from this— Day had no courage to review What lusty dark alone might do— Then were we joined from their caress In heat of midnight, one from two….
A group of us attempted to better understand what is meant by culture. Isn’t culture tacitly agreed upon habits of behavior, norms of a common life, a form-of-life shared? Expectations are built up gradually by observation and practice. So much becomes “as if” instinct, imprinted habit. I simply know how to act, and how…
To love is to give what you do not have to someone who does not exist. -Jacques Lacan, Seminar VIII Today I “decided” to dedicate time to revisit the ideas of Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). Lacan was a psychoanalyst practicing according to the insight offered by Freudian philosophy which treated the unconscious. Lacan was interested…
‘There is no end or beginning to the Tao. Things indeed die and are born, not reaching a perfect state which can be relied on. Now there is emptiness, and now fulness; – they do not continue in one form. The years cannot be reproduced; time cannot be arrested. Decay and growth, fulness and…
Zo of the Northern Sea replied, ‘From the standpoint of the Tao, what is noble? and what is mean? These expressions are but the different extremes of the average level. Do not keep pertinaciously to your own ideas, which put you in such opposition to the Tao. What are few? and what are many?…
The earl of the Ho said, ‘Well then, may I consider heaven and earth as (the ideal of) what is great, and the point of a hair as that of what is small?’ Zo of the Northern Sea replied, ‘No.’ The (different) capacities of things are illimitable; time never stops, (but is always moving…
They who lose themselves in their pursuit of things, and lose their nature in their study of what is vulgar, must be pronounced people who turn things upside down. -Zhuangzi, Correcting the Nature, by Zhuang Zhou, trans. James Legge With the GMC Sierra truck commercials, I feel a twinge of discomfort. Is that repulsion…
